MIAMI, Jan 19 (Reuters) - The Miami relatives of Cuban shipwreck survivor Elian Gonzalez filed a federal lawsuit on Wednesday to force the U.S. government to hold a hearing on whether he should stay in the United States or go back to Cuba, the family's lawyers said.
The case was filed against Attorney General Janet Reno, who has said that only the 6-year-old's father can speak for him and that Elian should be returned to his homeland.
``The purpose of this lawsuit is to compel the U.S. government, the Justice Department and the INS to treat Elian Gonzalez fairly, to have a hearing to allow all sides to be heard,'' the family's lawyer, Spencer Eig, said at a news conference after the suit was filed in U.S. District Court.
Eig said the lawsuit would not preempt other attempts to keep Elian in this country, including moves in the U.S. Congress to have him made a U.S. citizen.
Elian has been at the centre of an international custody battle since he was found by fishermen floating on an inner tube off the Florida coast on Nov. 25. He survived the sinking of a migrant boat in which his mother and 10 others died.
The U.S. Immigration and Naturalisation Service released Elian to the custody of relatives in Miami, where he is attending kindergarten at a private school in the Little Havana neighbourhood. His relatives want to keep him in the United States, and his father has repeatedly asked the United
States to send his son home.
The custody battle has increased tensions between Cold War foes Havana and Washington and spurred heated rhetoric between Cuban President Fidel Castro and his longtime enemies in Miami's Cuban exile community.
Cubans staged massive demonstrations in the streets of Havana and exiles countered with smaller protests here.
Jorge Mas Santos, head of the influential Cuban American National Foundation, appeared with Eig and the other attorneys at the news conference.
The lawsuit asked the court to compel the INS to grant Elian a political asylum hearing and to allow the boy to apply for U.S. residency. It also sought preliminary and permanent injunctions barring the INS from sending him to Cuba.
``Apart from the deprivation of basic civil rights that most Cubans suffer, Elian would bear the additional burden of being a political symbol of a totalitarian regime if he were returned to Cuba,'' the lawsuit said.
Elian's Miami relatives applied for political asylum for the boy previously but because INS officials ruled that only Elian's father speaks for him, the asylum claim was withdrawn.
The lawsuit named Elian himself as the plaintiff through his great-uncle Lazaro Gonzalez as his temporary legal custodian, relying on a Florida family court ruling that put the boy in his great-uncle's temporary custody. But Reno has said the family court ruling had no impact on her decision.
``I really feel that he should get a hearing,'' said the boy's cousin, Marisleysis Gonzalez. ``He has rights too. They should listen to what he has to say... He wants to stay.''
The suit named as defendants Reno, the INS, its Commissioner, Doris Meissner, INS Miami district director Robert Wallis and the U.S. Justice Department.
INS spokeswoman Maria Cardona said the INS and the Justice Department would ask the court to act ``expeditiously'' on the lawsuit. ``We believe it is important to the well-being of Elian Gonzalez that the status of this 6-year-old boy be resolved as quickly as possible,'' she told Reuters.
Asked if the INS had any firm plans to take custody of Elian to return him to Cuba, Cardona said, ``We'll wait and see what the court ruling is.''
No hearing date has been set.
The case was assigned to U.S. District Judge James Lawrence King, the chief judge of the south Florida region, who in a lawsuit filed against the Cuban government in 1997 awarded $187 million to the families of three Cuban Americans shot down by a Cuban jet as their small planes flew over the
Florida Straits in February 1996.
In Havana, Elian's paternal grandmother, Mariela Quintana, told Cuban state news agency Prensa Latina on Wednesday the she was willing to travel briefly to the United States to pick up and return Elian.
``I will only be there for five minutes, the time I will need to pick him up wherever they have him -- in a church, in immigration or wherever they place him. Five minutes, no more,'' she said.
U.S. officials said they support the idea and would speed processing of visa applications from Elian's father or grandparents, but Cuban officials said they should not go unless the U.S. can assure them they will not be entangled in U.S. legal and political battles.
The lawsuit would become moot if the U.S. Congress grants Elian citizenship, Eig said.
Immigration lawyer Ira Kurzban said he believed the aim of the relatives and their advisors was to prolong the dispute until Congress reconvenes on Monday. If Elian is granted residency or citizenship, as some Congressmen are demanding, it would take the case out of the INS' hands, Kurzban told
Reuters. ``This has just been a political dance,'' he said.
He criticised the INS for not enforcing its ruling and demanding the relatives hand over the boy.
``What she (Reno) has done is a joke,'' he said. ``When they (INS) want to act, they know how to act.''
21:31 01-19-00
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